It is not what you expect to find
after trekking uphill five blocks
in the Japanese District after a
hot day in the city. It smells like
compost tumbling over itself
here on the side of the hill,
is strewn together good enough
with spare wood, multi-multi-use
buckets and laminated signs
some person with a printer
tacked to tree trunks to guide
visitors toward an exit; yes,
wabi-sabi enough to get lost.
It is how we ran our land when
I was young, making do with
parts of things and scraps and
pieces of other things. I forget
the city outside. Chicken coop
signs (please do not feed us rice),
sunflowers grown beyond a
hand’s span whose peach fuzz
necks bow to watch weeds sustain
this morsel of wild in the city,
now I barefoot along stone steps,
toe my way down the other side,
find a sitting-rock in the orchard
and do that a while among this
stench of four-days-fallen apples
and flies on a summer afternoon
and when I am done scribbling
memories search for more to do,
for more to think about, perhaps
another reason to stay put.

(August 27, 2019)